1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electro-optic device, more particularly, it relates to a device comprising a liquid crystal layer having a large display area, which is capable of providing an extended visual field and an animation. The liquid crystal device according to the present invention may be used for electric machines for office automation (OA), such as laptop personal computers.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Liquid crystal display devices heretofore put into practice include those using singly nematic liquid crystals, i.e., the TN (twisted nematic) mode or the STN (super-twisted nematic) mode liquid crystals. There is also proposed a device using a ferroelectric liquid crystal alone. However, the liquid crystal display devices mentioned hereinbefore use a polarizer sheet on the surface and the back of the device. Furthermore, those devices are provided with molecule-orienting films (orientation control films) on the electrodes of the devices. The molecule-orienting films are formed by an orientation treatment. On the other hand, there is also known a method of producing liquid crystal devices having high contrast without applying such molecular orientation treatments. The method comprises dispersing liquid crystals or liquid crystal granules in a polymer by granulating the liquid crystal, and then making a film of the resulting polymer. As the substrances for granulating, proposed are gelatin, gum arabic, poly vinyl alcohol, and the like as proposed in unexamined published Japanese patent application No. 58-501631 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,435,047. In this method, the granulated liquid crystal molecules arrange themselves along the electric field when an electric voltage is applied, and the display itself turns transparent if the refractive index of the liquid crystal agrees with that of the polymer. When the electric field is removed, the liquid crystal molecules recover the random orientation, and the display becomes opaque white because the light is dispersed at the boundary between the liquid crystal and the polymer due to the difference in refractive index between them.
However, since the liquid crystal device described above does not use the conventionally known polarizer sheets, the achievement of a sufficiently high contrast has been a great problem to be solved.